The Meaning of America — now worse
Thursday, May 11 2017

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…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressedand the treachery of their leaders..
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“Today, we witness the meaning of America. Cut Social Security; cut Medicare; cut Medicaid; cut federal employment; cut payments to the millions of people who rely on federal payments; cut immigration.

“Today, we are led by moral and intellectual midgets, frightened little cowards, selfishly clinging to what they have amassed for themselves, uncaring about others, who now that they are here, would build a wall of meanness around America, to prevent others from achieving the American Dream.

1. His new budget comes down especially hard on the poor–imposing unprecedented cuts in low-income housing, job training, food assistance, legal services, help to distressed rural communities, nutrition for new mothers and their infants, funds to keep poor families warm, even “meals on wheels.”
2. Trump and his enablers in the GOP are on the way to repealing the Affordable Care Act, and replacing it in a way that could cause 14 million Americans to lose their health insurance next year, and 24 million by 2026 — to give $600 billion in tax cuts over the decade mostly to wealthy Americans.
3. Trump is banning Syrian refugees and slashing the total number of refugees this year by more than half. This comes just when the world is experiencing the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
4. Trump is rounding up undocumented immigrants helter-skelter – including people who have been productive members of our society for decades, and young people who have been here since they were toddlers.

Trump is not an anomaly. Trump is not a loose cannon. Trump is not crazy. Donald Trump is a perfect reflection of what the Republican Party has espoused — an increasingly cruel, selfish, unAmerican theology — since the Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey “Contract With America” in 1994.

Among the bills that emerged from the “Contract” were:

The “Fiscal Responsibility Act,” that would require a dramatic cut to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that benefit the 99% of Americans, while cutting taxes on the rich.

The “Taking Back Our Streets Act”, based on the proven-false premise that harsh laws and long prison terms were the way to cut street crimes committed by the poor. (No punishment provisions were included for the white collar crimes committed by the rich — the crimes that caused the “Great Recession.”)

The “Personal Responsibility Act” to punish teen pregnancy by eliminating aid to mothers under 18, limiting Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and limiting unemployment compensation — all under the GOP doctrine that the poor are not victims of circumstance, but instead are lazy, criminal malingerers, who must be punished for their sloth.

The “Common Sense Legal Reform Act” to protect businesses from so-called “frivolous litigation,” which included terms making damage suits by the average person against the rich corporations almost impossible.

For more than two decades, the Republican Party has based its appeal on the notion that the rich inherently are good and moral, while the rest of us must be controlled, like wild animals, with severe punishments for any breach, and especially for not being rich.

Interestingly, many of the very people victimized by this austere philosophy, have embraced it as a reflection of “Gap Psychology,”the desire to distance oneself from those below on any social scale.

Demonizing those less fortunate is an integral part of that psychology.

Thus the increasingly evil cruelty, lies, and selfishness of a Donald Trump is the natural evolution of the inhumanity the GOP has promulgated, and what too many Americans now have endorsed.

This country was founded on the belief that the “poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free” were intellectually and morally equivalent, if not superior, to the imperial princes of wealth. We were proud to be the “common man.”

•Progressives think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.